PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - The White House has announced that a late civil rights activist from Hood River will be one of this year's recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's top civilian award.
Minoru Yasui was the first Japanese-American graduate of the University of Oregon School of Law. In 1942, he openly defied the wartime curfew against Japanese-Americans, an act that got him sent to a Portland jail for nine months of solitary confinement.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the conviction in 1943, and Yasui spent the rest of his life appealing his conviction.
A federal court eventually overturned it in 1986, the year he died at age 70.
Congressman Greg Walden supported the nomination in a letter to President Obama. He said Yasui's act of civil obedience was compelled by faith in the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution.
The White House also announced that an Indian treaty rights activist and Environmental Protection Agency leader from Washington state will be among those receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Billy Frank, Jr. was an Indian treaty rights and environmental stewardship advocate, whose activism paved the way for the "Boldt decision," which reaffirmed tribal co-management of salmon resources in the state. Frank, who died in 2014, led effective "fish-ins," akin to sit-ins of the civil rights movement, during the tribal "fish wars" of the 1960s and 1970s.
William D. Ruckelshaus was first and fifth administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, under Presidents Nixon and Reagan. Among the EPA's key achievements under his leadership was a nationwide ban on the pesticide DDT.
The awards will be presented next week at the White House.
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